Okaloosa Academy Charter School students will attend classes in a new location during the upcoming school year. When class begins Aug. 18, Crestview and Fort Walton Beach campuses' portable classrooms will be a thing of the past. The alternative school's future will be at the former Combs-New Heights Elementary School on Lovejoy Road.
A final contract still needed to be approved, but the Okaloosa County School Board gave the Rader Group, which oversees the Academy, the green light to have classes there.
Prior to this agreement, the Okaloosa County School District had leased the building to several entities. It stopped using it as a school in the early 2000s.
At the end of the previous school year, Terri Roberts, chief executive officer for the Rader Group, said they had 120 students at the Crestview location and 220 at their Fort Walton Beach one. She anticipated that number would grow slightly in the 2014-15 school year because fourth- and fifth-graders will attend the school for the first time as well.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Okaloosa Academy moving to old Fort Walton Beach elementary school